‘ISIS, Albanian extremists – US supports anyone who does what it wants’

Police storm towards protestors in front of the Macedonian government building in Skopje, Macedonia May 5, 2015. (Reuters/Ognen Teofilovski) / Reuters

The US still supports the Kosovo project even though it has failed and brought great instability to the region making many Kosovan extremists join ISIS and come back now to destabilize nearby Macedonia, says International affairs commentator Marko Gasic.

Anti-government protests are back on the streets of Macedonia’s
capital, Skopje. They follow armed clashes in the ethnically
mixed city of Kumanovo that erupted on Saturday and left 22 dead,
including eight police officers. Demonstrators accuse officials
of trying to cover up the killing of a young man by police in
2011, and demand the government’s resignation after opposition
figures released the latest in a series of leaked recordings,
implicating the government in lying to the public.

RT:The American embassy in Skopje and some
EU diplomats are criticizing the Macedonian government for
failing to address the root causes of the riots in the capital.
What are the root causes and what does this say about the
pressure being put on Macedonia by Western governments?

Marko Gasic: I think the root causes are
actually closer to Washington than to Skopje in my opinion
because when a red light goes on, whenever I hear the Americans
criticizing a government and demanding they take action to
address supposedly legitimate grievances - of course the
grievances of corruption are Balkan-wide, endemic in the region,
it’s nothing new there - but as in Ukraine, as in Yugoslavia in
1999, and now in Macedonia, American pressure always is
self-serving and it’s designed to achieve an American end. And I
think that the larger question here is the problem for the US is
the planned pipeline which is designed to go from Turkey into
Central Europe through Greece and indeed through Macedonia. The
US has created a very effective cordon sanitaire to block off
Russia from its natural EU economic partners. But this cordon
sanitaire is frayed at the edges with the Turks not playing ball,
with the Greeks being unreliable. So the US needs a plan B. And
if it needs to shut this pipeline off then it will do it if it
has to in Macedonia. And how better to do that than to create a
great deal of instability to make Russia and the EU think twice
about the idea of building a pipeline there.

RT:So you think the instability we are
seeing here is directly linked to the pipeline.

MG: I do yeah because the question is why now.
Extremist Albanians - who want to create a greater Albania out of
sovereign countries - have been a problem for the region… for
quite a long time and usually the US supports them, I don’t see
them behaving any differently now. But the question is why is
this unrest happening now? The corruption is a historic problem
for Macedonia and for the region, but what is new is the Turkish
Stream pipeline that President Putin has planned to replace South
Stream which was cancelled. Now this is the problem for the US
because if that pipeline goes through, then the US pipeline which
it would like to have via Qatar sending gas into Europe and
allowing the US to press the stop button on energy supplies into
the EU when it likes. That’s the thing that would be sacrificed,
and the US doesn’t want to see that lever of power removed by
Russian advancement. Also the US doesn’t want to see Russia and
the EU relations at a good cooperative level. And of course the
alternative to those relations is that the EU will have to turn
west towards the US, towards its own liquefied natural gas
supplies and indeed towards US allies in the Middle East, which
effectively will give the US a veto on the development of Russian
and the EU relations throughout the region.

RT:The shootout this weekend was allegedly
carried out by a group led by Kosovan Albanians. The West
supported the minority when Kosovo broke away from Serbia, is the
support still there?

MG: Yes it is. The Kosovan Albanians were
already the US lever into the Balkans because they were the basis
for Camp Bondsteel, the largest military base since Vietnam which
is very close to Macedonia. We can see now why the Americans
would have wanted to build such an important military base very
close to this strategic route which links Central Europe to the
Middle East via the Mediterranean. So yes, the US still supports
the Kosovo project even though it has undeniably failed and even
though it has a huge amount of instability in Kosovo caused by
the endemic corruption which has led many Kosovan extremists to
go to join ISIS in the Middle East, and to come back now to
destabilize nearby Macedonia. In essence whether it’s ISIS or
Albanian extremists in the Balkans, the US supports them because
they do what the US wants when the US wants it, and that is now
in Macedonia.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.